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The creator, Max Goldberg, made the first site after watching the trailer to Finding Forrester. This first site (recreated here) consisted of some ASCII art and Sean Connery's "You're the man now, dog!" line from the trailer. As other people started to create their own Spinoffs of the page by copying the code, Max started listing them. Eventually the list became overly long, so Max bought an entire domain for the sites and made an easy-to-use site generator. Indeed, in the pre-Youtube days, the site became a prime breeding ground for many an internet meme. And the rest is history.

The main feature of the site is to allow users to create their own pages, or YTMNDs, using a still image or GIF animation, an MP3 file and the site's patented zooming text.

This site contains examples of:

After the trailer that started it all was posted as an YTMND, many users started wondering what would have happened if Max had decided to use one of Sean Connery's other lines, namely "Punch the keys, for God's sake!" or "Yes... Yes!". Eventually, some users started creating Bizarro Universe versions of popular YTMND fads under the label of PTKFGS. Soon after, sites with the YESYES label followed, which is basically a Take a Third Option spin on the fads. Then, since Connery only had these three lines in the trailer, many users worked around it by using some of his other lines from the film to create a fourth Alternate Universe. Which one of the many candidates is the true fourth universe is still under dispute, but the general consensus seems to be that the fourth universe is in fact a Multiverse known collectively as "Fourth Corner".

HEH is considered by some to be the official 4th Corner Universe, as it is also in the trailer. However, those against this idea point out that HEH is technically a part of the "Yes...Yes!" line.

Let's not forget YTMNSFW, the Not Safe for Work version suitable for more mature stuff.

Catchphrase: In ye old days of 2006, the troll sexymofo would serially downvote any YTMND with "you fail, please try again ^_^". The trolling was prolific enough to trigger rage and memes... and inspire similar trolls to leave catchphrases of their own.

Cloud Cuckoo Lander: VinnyWeapons, the user who always made the same comment: "the robots have taken me. please send help." Also, the behavior of trolls Pilleater and Johnny Lurg often reaches this territory, such as the time the former user pretended that he went blind. Two months later, he posted, "I can see again!" The user zomglolwtfzor usually epitomizes this trope, but occasionally breaks character.

Dying Town: The site itself. There was a time when the internet was young (not actually, 2006 and 2007) the when front page moved so fast, it'd be different every time you refreshed. Now, it stays static for days on end. It's portrayed as a zombie town in this site, and a wasteland in this one.

The Fundamentalist: Inkdrinker was a meta example. He popularized the three "fundamentals" of YTMND: image, sound, text. None of his sites contained sound-synced gifs, dubbed by adherents as "faggy short films."

Giant Enemy Crab: YTMND was one of the first sites to popularize the phrase, and it has become somewhat of an accepted fact that in the YTMND universe, Samurai actually did battle Giant Enemy Crabs in Ancient Japan.

Jail Bait Wait: Many users eagerly counted down the days until Julianna Rose-Mauriello, the actress who played Stephanie on LazyTown, would become 18, and made many YTMNDs celebrating the occasion when it actually did happen.

Loudness War: The FPA and ear rape fads, some mixes would easily reach levels 12 or 13 on the Mohs Scale of Rock and Metal Hardness, such as this (and that's only a roughly typical example). There's also the requisite screamer YTMNDs, some of which manage to crawl up to the front page.

The first involves taking one line from a song that sounds like something else and pairing it with an appropriate picture. This collection was named the "Dew Army," after a famous YTMND of David Hasselhoff singing "Du"

The second is the opposite: involving taking an entire song sung in a foreign language and using In My Language, That Sounds Like... to write English lyrics for it. This one started with an interpretation of the Finnish version of the DuckTales (1987) theme, which was actually spun off from a "Dew Army" type site which only interpreted one line from the theme as "Your arms are broken!".

The "Epic Maneuver" fad, wherein people do things in an unnecessarily epic manner, sometimes failing. The original was taken from the overly dramatic and badly acted Unnecessary Combat Roll underneath a really slow-moving door from Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Best of Both Worlds: Part I".

There was a civil war once over whether the Epic Maneuver YTMNDs should be about actually epic maneuvers or mundane tasks passed off as epic.

Trademark Favorite Booze: Max once attributed a mishap that made the site lose a bunch of YTMNDs/votes/comments to him getting drunk off Grey Goose vodka. The site quickly started associating it with Max, and and bottles of it would always show up whenever he was mentioned or depicted in a YTMND.

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